License-gate Fallout: Senator Rehman Slams Civil Aviation Authority for PIA’s Four-Year EU Ban

Liaquat Ali

Islamabad: The Senate Standing Committee on Aviation was convened to discuss ongoing issues plaguing the aviation industry. Senator Sherry Rehman brought immediate attention to the “Licence-gate” challenge and the ban on Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) from flying to the European Union (EU) for the past four years.

Senator Sherry Rehman unpacked the need for accountability and transparency in addressing both the issues which were independent of each other, but remained shockingly unaddressed and opaque to this day. She questioned why Civil Aviation was allowed to both conduct exams for licenses and put out a list of so called fake licenses at the same time, while the serving minister of the time made a speech that downed PIA and its trained pilots from a slump that they have never been able to recover from.

The committee was informed that PIA still remains banned from flying to Europe due to international regulatory air safety concerns.

Senator Rehman expressed concern over the lack of accountability and transparency in such a matter of grave national importance. She questioned the reliability numbers mentioned by the ministry as irrelevant if there was no threshold of success they were grading themselves on and pointed out that the airline’s rapid decline was a result of the glaring lack of accountability and public audit. Despite four years of inquiry, no one who was actually responsible has been held accountable for the grounding of the air fleet from flying to the EU, nor for the pilots issue she said.

Senator Rehman stressed that accountability is crucial, noting that if an ordinary citizen were involved, they would have been jailed by now. She emphasized that parliament holds itself accountable, and the civil service must do the same but must understand that boilerplate presentations are no longer acceptable in the upper house of parliament, because most of us have a better acquaintance with the data and the hidden issues that have been pushed under the rug.

Senator Rehman requested that the report prepared regarding the European Union’s safety protocols be shared with the committee. She also asked that the inquiry report regarding the ban on pilots be presented in the committee. The Committee Chair also agreed to a special session of the committee on the above two issues.

The committee members supported Senator Sherry Rehman’s remarks.